Mars. There have to be little green men with ACME weapons living there. Or we have some incredibly bad luck when it comes to sending spacecrafts to the Red Planet. Most of them fail, for one reason or the other.

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Out of 42 missions, only 20 have succeeded. That's less than 50% chance of survival. And it gets worse: Of those, only eight were actually programmed to land on Mars, which is actually the theoretically difficult part.

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While the success rate increased after 1971, I would be very nervous if I were a budding astronaut wanting to go up there—and still, I wish I was that astronaut. Better go in style while trying to reach the glory, than staying down here, slowly turning to dust. [Shnelll via Fastcompany]